of cotton manufacturing, including print-works, in Mexico is probably not more at the present time than twelve thousand. The population of Mexico, to whom cotton-cloth is the chief and essential material for clothing, may be estimated at ten million. Free from all tariff restrictions, the factories of Fall River, Massachusetts, could sell in Mexico at a profit a cotton fabric as good as, or better than, that produced and sold by the factory at Querétaro, for five cents a yard, or even less. A population of ten million, poor almost beyond conception, have therefore to pay from two to three hundred per cent more for the staple material of their simple clothing than needs be, in order that some other ten or twelve thousand of their fellow-citizens—men and women—may have the privilege of working exhaustively from fourteen to fifteen hours a day in a factory, for the small pittance of from thirty-five to seventy cents, and defraying the cost of their own subsistence! Nor is this all. Under such excessive duties as now prevail, comparatively few cheap coarse cotton fabrics are legitimately imported into Mexico, and the Government fails to get the revenue it so much needs. The business of smuggling is, however, greatly encouraged, and all along the northern frontiers of Mexico has become so well organized and so profitable as to successfully defy the
